


Don't Get Too Political 4: Better the Devil You Know

by Balkanika_52



Series: Don't Get Too Political [4]
Category: Eurovision Song Contest RPF
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Crack, Fluff, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:15:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28450770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balkanika_52/pseuds/Balkanika_52
Summary: After a trip to Georgia gone wrong, Ness and Vogel find themselves in Azerbaijan...and in jail, with no memory of how they got there. What happened, and how did they become better outlaws than Waylon?
Relationships: Duncan Laurence/Vanja Radovanović
Series: Don't Get Too Political [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877320
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. Why do I Always Get it Wrong?

“Ness, wake up!”

_ Wait--when did I fall asleep?,  _ Ness wondered as she slowly opened her eyes, blinking more at the harsh fluorescent lighting that she saw before turning her head and seeing Vogel next to her, her mouth set in a line, hands clasped in front of her. She would have made a reference to one of their favourite memes, but something made her stop and think that the situation was far too serious for it. “Where are we? Why does my head hurt so much?”

Then she took in their surroundings.

For whatever reason, they weren’t where she expected them to be--in Belgrade, at the club, on the sofa in her office with a fuzzy blanket draped over herself, where she had fallen asleep more times than she’d care to admit--but in a jail cell.

Something had happened, and she had no memory of what it was. “What did we do?” Judging by the look on her friend’s face, it wasn’t good, but she hadn’t expected what Vogel said next. “Ness...I have no idea. The last thing I remember was being in Tbilisi-”

_ “Wait.  _ Why were we in Tbilisi?”

Why had they been in the Georgian capital during the workweek? Sure, one of the perks of being in business with your friends and being essentially self-employed was that you could take vacation whenever you wanted, but, for the most part, they tended to set aside a single month a year where they’d go on vacation.

August wasn’t that month.

“Upgraded equipment for the club, remember? I asked you to come with me. Figured we could get some decent khachapuri while we were there.”

“Right.” She murmured, although her memory was still pretty hazy. She hadn’t even remembered that? Something was definitely off, and it wasn’t just because they were in a jail cell. The mention of the cheesy, gooey Georgian dish set her stomach growling, and she sat up before standing and starting to pace around the cell. “So where the hell are we now, if we’re not in Tbilisi?” A sign on the wall gave her a pretty good idea of it once she read it. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

When Ness turned around to face her friend, her teeth were clenched and she looked more worried than ever before. “Vogel, I don’t know how it happened, but I think we’ve gotten ourselves arrested in Azerbaijan.”


	2. Hurricane

_ Meanwhile, in Belgrade, Serbia… _

“Weren’t they supposed to get back today?” Duncan glanced up from his composing notebook at his husband’s question, thinking over what Ness and Vogel had told them. “I think so? Let me check the calendar.” He closed the notebook and got up, taking care to avoid kicking Praznina, who had been lounging at his feet for the past hour, before walking over to the calendar on the wall. “You’re right. They were. So why haven’t they called us from the airport yet, telling us they’ve got the equipment and a few bottles of Georgian wine?”

Something was  _ definitely  _ off.

And they had thought that, once Waylon had been defeated, their crazy adventures were over.

“You don’t think that...I don’t know, Kirkorov  _ actually  _ broke out of prison and kidnapped them, do you?” Vanja laughed, although there was still a note of worry in it. “I think a lot of things, Duncy. That, however, is doubtful. He’s in a maximum-security prison. There’s probably a reasonable explanation for why they’re not back yet. Maybe Vogel dropped her phone in the river again. Come here.”

He gladly accepted Vanja’s hug, the familiar scent of his cologne helping to calm his mind and free him of any thoughts of that man, focusing instead on the one who was with him, the one he loved more than anything. “You’re right. There probably  _ is  _ a reasonable explanation for why they’re not back yet. Let me call Ness and see if she picks up.”

The phone rang again...and again...and again...until he got Ness’s voicemail.  _ “Hey, it’s Ness. If I’m not answering, I’m probably streaming No Degree of Separation. Leave a message.” _

“Ness, why aren’t you and Vogel back yet with the equipment? Call me when you get this, will you? I’m starting to get a little worried. We both are.” A minute after he hung up the phone, it rang--but the person on the other end of the line wasn’t Ness. “Duncan?” Vogel sounded tired and defeated, like she had just lost a fight with a mortal enemy. “Hey. What’s going on? Why aren’t you back yet?” What came over the line next nearly made him drop the phone.

“We got arrested in Azerbaijan.”

“You WHAT?!” He yelped, making Vanja’s eyebrows raise in concern as he continued, rambling a bit, “You were in Georgia to pick up equipment, how the hell did you get arrested?! And in  _ Azerbaijan _ , no less?! This isn’t Season 18 of  _ Wie is de Mol! _ ”

Vanja, who was somehow staying calm, took the phone from him and put it on speaker, holding it in between them so they could both hear. “We don’t know. The past 48 hours are a haze. Is there anyone that could come bail us out?” They exchanged a look--any gaps in memory were not a good sign. It could have meant that someone had hurt their friends. Vanja finally spoke into the phone, his voice reassuring. “Sit tight. We’re coming to get you. Do us a favor and don’t get in to any more trouble.”

Hanging up the phone, he bit his lip before saying, “Let’s go get our friends out of jail.” It was a matter of an hour before they found themselves on a plane headed for Baku, and as the lights in the cabin dimmed, they started discussing any theory they could think of about how their friends had gotten arrested, and Vanja couldn’t help but point out how ironic it was. “So, despite what you promised me, we’ve found ourselves in a crazy situation yet again.”

“Okay, maybe I was wrong when I said that defeating Waylon would be the end-all of our troubles. I admit it. There has to be a reasonable explanation for why they got arrested. Maybe they got caught up in a protest that went wrong?” Vanja had brought his laptop with him and was already searching the newsfeeds for any mention of a protest. “Hmm...doesn’t look like that’s a possibility. No reports of protests over the past few days.” He opened another tab and his jaw dropped at what he saw.

“ _ Proklet. _ I’m calling Aisel. _ ” _


	3. Ne Zori, Zoro (Dawn, Don't Rise)

“Vanja, over here!”

He was happy to see a familiar face at the arrivals section, even if she looked just as worried as he felt. Waylon and his cronies might have had their ‘I failed at Eurovision’ groupchat, but Vanja had been part of the ‘I didn’t make it out of the semis in 2018’ groupchat ever since May of that year. There were some good memes that came out of it, but most importantly, he made friends from it, one of whom happened to be the Azeri singer from that year, Aisel. They had bonded over their shared love of obscure jazz records and kept in touch over the years, so when he and Duncan were making their plans to rescue Ness and Vogel from jail, he had called her.

She was the only person he really knew in Azerbaijan, and there was no way in hell that they were going to ask the only other person they could have--Chingiz--for help, not after he had been a jerk to Duncan after his win in 2019. “They got  _ arrested _ ? And here I was thinking that your crew’s idea of a wild night out was getting drunk and playing Cards Against Humanity.”

“Aisel, you do realise we run a nightclub, right? We can get crazy when we want to. But neither of us expected them to get arrested, not on an equipment run. Then I saw this.” The headline on the screen was something that sounded like a bad round of Cards Against Humanity, ironically enough.

_ Club Owners Steal Horse Outside of Baku. _

Stealing a horse was bad, but not the first thing that anyone would have expected them to get arrested for. Duncan still wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, though, and was running through ideas in his mind as to  _ why  _ his normally-law-abiding friends had suddenly caused an international incident. Apart from the ones they had caused before, of course--but those had happened under duress.

This was different.

For starters, they hadn’t managed to get themselves arrested beforehand. Unless they had been  _ framed _ , it was going to be difficult to untangle this situation--and even then, they’d need a good deal of proof. “First things first. Let’s get them bailed out.”

When they arrived at the police station, Aisel and Duncan went to the front desk to start filling out the paperwork to get Ness and Vogel out on bail. They would be able to leave the building, but not the country, not until they were either prosecuted or cleared of the charges. Vanja nearly stopped breathing until he saw his friends rounding the corner, and gathered them into a hug when they were within hugging distance. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“I’ve got a headache, but we’re okay otherwise. Thanks for coming to get us so quickly. Do you know what we did? Allegedly?”

“You stole a horse. Very Waylon of you. Tell me the truth--did you do it?” Ness blinked in shock; did Vanja  _ really _ think they could have stolen a horse? “No. At least, I’m pretty sure we didn’t. Is there any video footage of the incident, so we can definitely prove we didn’t?”

As they soon found out, there wasn’t. They had been found in one of the city parks with the horse, which had been reported missing, so, naturally, they had been arrested for the theft. It was time for a plan. “We need to call Douwe. He could probably get us into the stables, and there’s probably cameras there. If we can get there, we can prove our innocence.”

A phone call and an hour’s drive later, they were at the stables where the horse had come from, the owner coming out to meet them a few minutes after they arrived on the property. “Let’s hope they don’t chase us off of their property with a shotgun.” Vogel murmured, jamming her hands into her pockets and rocking back and forth on her heels nervously. “Sounds like someone’s been watching too many spaghetti Westerns. What’s more likely to happen is a nice, calm chat. Douwe vouched for us. How bad can it really be?”

Not at all, it turned out. The rancher, whose name was Maral, was surprised to see them, but wasn’t pointing any sort of weapon at them, which was a plus. “Where is he?” She demanded after they explained why they had come. “The horse?”

“No.” She shook her head, exasperated. “The other thief.”

_ Other  _ thief? This was a new development. “We don’t know who you mean.” Vogel finally spoke up, fighting the urge to yawn--the jail cell cot had not been a good bed at all. “We were framed, and we have no memory of what happened. Who is he?” Maral sighed. “I have camera footage, I’ll show you.” They followed her into the main house, where, after a few keystrokes, they found themselves looking at footage of the night that the horse had been stolen. “Who  _ is  _ that?”

The figure that was with Ness and Vogel onscreen looked oddly familiar--or, more accurately, his posture did. He looked like a cardboard cutout more than he did a man, and his hands were in front of him in a position known to many as  _ doing it to ‘em _ . When he turned, the camera able to catch his face, it was confirmed who had framed Ness and Vogel for stealing the horse. Someone who, whenever they rewatched Eurovision 2012, they poked fun at for being an uncharismatic host who constantly looked like a robot.

“ _ Ell.” _


	4. Day After Day

Eldar Gasimov, or, as he was better known to the Eurovision community, ‘Ell from Ell and Nikki’, was behind the horse theft. Why he had done it, they had no idea, but now they knew who was responsible for framing Ness and Vogel. Now they had someone to fight, not that they  _ wanted  _ to fight anyone; however, they were in the habit of making sure those who wronged them got their just desserts. Their adventures were proof enough of it. “So, what’s our game plan?”

“Confront him, figure out why he framed us, and punch him if we need to. And I  _ really  _ hope we need to. I want to punch the smug look off of his face.”

“Ness, don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?” The look Ness gave Duncan could have frozen an Icelandic hot spring. “He framed us for stealing a horse, so no, I don’t. Right, Vogel?” Vogel had nearly fallen asleep, and had to be nudged alert. “I wouldn’t mind fighting him.” She eventually said, staving off a yawn. “But after that, I want to sleep for a day. Or two.”

“You said the same thing after we got back from Bulgaria.” Vogel rolled her eyes when Vanja pointed it out before pointedly asking, “Yes? And? Didn’t  _ you _ want to sleep for an extended period of time after we got back from time travelling to the 90s to save Duncan?” She had a point--time travel had taken a lot out of him, and for a week after they got back to their own time, all he could think of was the comfy pillow waiting for him at home. “That’s true. Alright. Step one, find Ell. Step two, find out why he did it. Step three-”

“Profit.” The others finished before they all cracked up. Some jokes were truly versatile, and that was one of them. “Where do we start?” After a bit of research on social media (and more than several snickers at how many pictures Ell had on his Instagram where he was ‘doing it to em’), they found out that he was scheduled to be in the studio recording that day. “Step one, complete. Time to confront him.”

Once they got to the recording studio, they ran into another snag: how to get past security without alerting Ell to their presence. “We could always cause a distraction with the sound system.” Vogel murmured, already taking out her phone, presumably to hack into the equipment and cause said distraction. “We did that the last time we were in this country, remember? Better not do the same thing twice, just in case they put two and two together.” She reluctantly put it away, already feeling the chance to hack into the sound system and play a certain song from Eurovision 2010 slip away, which made her a little sad.

It would have made for a fantastic distraction, but it would probably have caused them all to go feral when the chorus hit.

“I’ve got a better idea.” Duncan grabbed Vanja’s hand, half-pulling him away from the others and into the building before kissing him quickly. “Your idea of causing a distraction is kissing me? I have to say, it’s not the worst one you’ve ever come up with-” A  _ shhh  _ cut him off, making him frown slightly before he peered around the corner. “Ell is right there, he just went into the studio. I’m tempted to jump him, but Ness and Vogel should get that honor.”

“Exactly. We cause the distraction, kissing optional. They go confront him.” Even then, Vanja couldn’t help but steal another kiss before he cracked open the door to let Ness and Vogel in. “Go get his ass. We’ll take care of anyone who might get in the way.” After cracking their knuckles, they went in their separate directions: Ness and Vogel towards where Ell had gone, Vanja and Duncan towards the main lobby.

Now was the time for them to get their answers. What they didn’t expect, however, was for Ell to greet them with a smile when they nearly busted down the door. “I was expecting you two to find me sooner or later.” Ness dropped her fist out of confusion, but stayed on the offensive. “You were? Why?” She demanded, glaring at the man who had gotten her and her best friend arrested. “Meaning to ask us for pointers on looking like you’re hosting  _ Wie is de Mol _ ? Because you’ve got that down pat.”

Even sitting in a chair, Ell was still  _ doing it to em _ . Some things never changed. “Answer the question, you colossal jerk. Why did you frame us? And why a horse? You could have at least framed us for stealing something more interesting.” He laughed as he got up, brushing his hands off, before he answered her with a question of his own. “You really thought Kirkorov was the only one who wanted Eurovision gone? There are more of us than you could ever imagine.”

Gone was the carefree tone, replaced with a menacing sneer. “The horse was the first part of the plan to ruin your reputations. Then the police would just happen to find drugs in your club. Your reputations in shambles, you’d finally know how it feels to have your entire life destroyed by a few upstarts.”

Vogel was trembling as Ell finished speaking, but not out of fear.

It was out of rage.

“Let me tell you something,  _ Eldar.  _ How is this our fault at all? It was  _ you  _ who chose to get involved with Kirkorov’s evil scheme--we just managed to stop it before he could do any more damage. It was  _ you  _ who hosted Eurovision looking like a constipated robot. What am I forgetting? Oh, right, it was  _ you  _ who fucked up the lyrics to ‘Waterloo’, literally the easiest song to remember. It’s hardly our fault you wake up every morning and drink a glass full of Dumbass Juice. Speaking of which…” She grinned as she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, revealing she had recorded the entire thing. “You must have drunk two this morning. Jig’s up, asshole.”

What happened next was expected and unexpected all at once. Ell threw a microphone at them and bolted for the door. Ness, who had gotten used to catching things that were travelling at high speeds (blame several dropped wine bottles for that), caught it with one hand and quickly stuck her foot out, tripping him and sending him sprawling to the floor, flat on his face. “Looks like that distraction wasn’t necessary, after all.”

Meanwhile in the lobby, Vanja and Duncan hadn’t even  _ started _ the planned distraction. Instead, they found themselves having a rather pleasant conversation with the other half of Azerbaijan’s 2011 winning duo, Nikki Jamal. “Why am I not surprised that he’d do something like that? I swear, ever since he flubbed the lyrics to ‘Waterloo’, he kind of went off the deep end.” A  _ bang  _ from down the hall made them all turn their heads to see Ell being hauled out of the recording studio by a pair of police officers, Ness and Vogel trailing behind them, a microphone clutched in Ness’s hand.

“I don’t even want to know.”


	5. Epilogue: Start a Fire

“So, there are more of them in Kirkorov’s cabal. The Kirki Cabal?  _ Anyways _ , I think we know what that means. There are more threats to the continent.” After they had seen Ell be sentenced themselves, the Euro365 crew were safely back in Belgrade--this time, with the equipment that they needed  _ and  _ some Georgian wine for kicks. Vanja and Duncan had settled down for a quiet night in, just the two of them and a bad rom-com on Netflix for background noise. “Just what we needed. Hopefully, they’ll take their time before they decide to mess up our lives again.”

“I’ll drink to that.” A second bottle of wine was opened soon after the first, and it wasn’t long before they were both tipsy, which made them act in ways they wouldn’t normally. “Duncy, come back!” Vanja nearly whined when his husband got up to put his glass in the dishwasher, which meant he wasn’t within reach. He got one of two ways when tipsy: being excessively needy and wanting to cuddle, or wanting to drunkenly sing whatever came to mind.

That second way was how they all found out he could hit high notes as well as Duncan. “Don’t you worry, I’m right here.” Duncan murmured as he settled back into his embrace, adding as an afterthought, “Mmm, you smell nice.” Unlike his husband, Duncan didn’t get needy when he was tipsy; he just started noticing every little thing about the person he was with. “I’m wearing the same cologne I always do.”

“So? You still smell nice.”

“Thanks. Enough talk, more cuddling.” It was then that he noticed for the first time that there was a faint scar just above Vanja’s collarbone. “Where did this come from?” He asked softly, tracing it with a finger. Vanja looked down, his answering laugh nearly a giggle. “You’re just now noticing this?”

When he saw Duncan’s eyebrows raise--a silent  _ answer the question, Vanja _ \--he sighed, sitting up a bit, before he answered. “It happened a day or two before I met you, ironically enough. I was running to catch a train, and in my hurry, I tripped and fell straight onto a piece of glass.”

“Why are you so clumsy? First you walk into a door and break your nose. Then you trip over a mic stand, and now I’m learning about  _ this _ ?” Sometimes, Vanja could surprise him, but this wasn’t one of those times; his clumsiness was one of the things that was extremely reliable about him. “I know, I have two left feet unless I’m dancing with you, and even then...”

“Even then, if I wasn’t holding your hand, you’d trip.” He finished, smiling at him with so much love it nearly blinded him. “We’re a perfect match. You with your wonky feet, me with my wonky hand. We aren’t perfect ourselves, but we’re perfect for each other, you know what I mean?”

“I do. I love every part of you, and you’re perfect to me, Duncan de Moor. Wonky hand and all.” To prove his point, he took Duncan’s right hand in his and kissed it softly. Duncan decided to have a little bit of fun with his tipsy affection. “Would you still love me if I cut all my hair off?” He wasn’t surprised when Vanja started laughing at what he just said. It was obviously clear that he had been joking. “First of all, you would  _ never  _ do that. Second, hair grows back. You’d still be my Duncan, just with less hair. I would miss your curls if you ever did cut all your hair off, though.”

Just then, his phone buzzed from where he had left it on the coffee table. Once, then twice, the vibration sounding more urgent the second time around. “Ugh, and here I was thinking we could have a quiet night in without any distractions.” A second after he had opened the notification, his face went pale, or, rather, paler than normal (which was saying something). “What is it?”

Grimacing, Vanja turned to face him. “It’s Josie. Someone’s taken Daði Freyr hostage.”


End file.
